If you’re going to enter a state of meditation, a technique of some sort must be employed that takes you there. (Note – I am fully aware of references to “spontaneous enlightenment experiences”, but these are an entirely different category of phenomena than what is being discussed here and are outside the scope of this discussion. Perhaps another time.)

You may not always be in the mood for meditation when your thoughts are racing, though it is a powerhouse of a stress reliever; you may sometimes face relationship stress that isn't as well-managed by breathing exercises (another highly effective stress reliever) as it might be by learning communication techniques. Guided imagery is fantastic for before bedtime while games are an optimal stress reliever to share with friends.

This simple app doesn’t have tons of bells and whistles, but by being just a one-screen app it doesn’t drain your battery or interfere with other apps you might be running. The interface is straightforward and lets you input exactly what binaural beats frequency you want to achieve. This is a great app if you know exactly what you want and you don’t want anything to get in the way of that.

While binaural beats are the most common technique we use for producing brainwave entrainment music, we do use other brainwave entrainment techniques such as isochronic tones, monaural beats and amplitude modulation. If these techniques have been used then you will find them mentioned in the written description of the music productions that include them. If not mentioned, then you can assume that binaural beats are the only brainwave entrainment technology in use.

Move your focus to the sole of your right foot. Tune in to any sensations you feel in that part of your body and imagine each breath flowing from the sole of your foot. After one or two minutes, move your focus to your right ankle and repeat. Move to your calf, knee, thigh, hip, and then repeat the sequence for your left leg. From there, move up the torso, through the lower back and abdomen, the upper back and chest, and the shoulders. Pay close attention to any area of the body that causes you pain or discomfort.
This is probably the most popular choice of frequency. The theta state is a state of tremendous stress relief. The benefits associated with theta level relaxation include improved concentration, reduced hyperactivity and improved memory. While in a state of theta relaxation, one’s blood pressure, breathing and heart rate all slow to a much more restful and healthy level that promotes natural healing. During theta relaxation one may also experience vivid flashes of mental imagery as the mind opens to memories or subconscious information that is not available to the conscious mind during the normal waking state. The theta state is a very deep state of relaxation that is excellent for deep hypnosis and mental programming.
It might surprise you to learn that biological stress is a fairly recent discovery. It wasn't until the late 1950s that endocrinologist Hans Selye first identified and documented stress. Symptoms of stress existed long before Selye, but his discoveries led to new research that has helped millions cope with stress. We’ve compiled a list of the top 10 ways to relieve stress.
The most common way to use a brainwave entrainment is for a short-term benefit, to help guide your brain into a particular mental state at the time you need it. In a similar way to how you might take a sleeping pill before bed to help you get to sleep, or maybe drink some coffee or an energy drink to help wake you up and give you a boost of energy.
With the binaural beats, this may be difficult to do since you need to listen to the twin frequencies and allow your brain to create a third one to bridge the gap. Ideally, you will be listening to these beats through headphones so carrying out other work may be challenge. However, with isochronic frequencies, the tone can be heard without headphones which means you can run the mp3 with a speaker and allow it to play in the background as you carry out your work. Of course, activities such as driving or operating heavy machinery should NOT be undertaken when you are listening to these tones because your attention is shared between the two tasks. Tasks like gardening or sewing or cooking can be done while your brainwave entrainment music is playing.
Now I’m in the market for two extra tracks to have some variety. I have narrowed it down to a couple of ones including muscle relaxation which is theta and delta. I have a hard time relaxing my body. The last time my muscles where relaxed was after intensely cleaning my stove. I don’t want to clean every time I want to relax, even though my house will be spotless ;).
Let’s face it, the stress we face today isn’t going anywhere, which is exactly why it’s more important than ever to find natural ways to bust stress that work well for us. If you’re up against large amounts of stress in your life (and who isn’t?), studies show you can greatly benefit from carving out more time in your busy schedule for things like regular exercise, meditation, spending time outdoors and keeping up with fun hobbies.

Many of our common symptom-soothing formulas are designed to take effect within 5-10 minutes if used properly. To get these fast-acting results, we recommend 3-4 droppers full, or 6-8 pumps, per use to start. If you are not yet feeling the full effect within the first 5 minutes, repeat the original serving. You can do this up to 4 servings back to back. Note that some of our formulas are tonics and are meant to work over longer periods of time.

Cory Allen [b. 1982] is a composer and mastering engineer living in Austin, Texas. His work focuses on the cultivation of human perception with the intent of altering the listener's state of consciousness. Allen's music is deep, patient, meditative, highly-conceptual and often composed by implementing self-organizing structures, rule-based performances, set pitch classes and a wide variety of instruments.
Therefore we are very receptive to new technology products that promise to improve our lives, or solve previously difficult problems, because of some new scientific or technological advance. This has created, in a sense, a marketplace of consumers that expect to be dazzled with technobabble they don’t understand, backed by assurances of legitimacy by the citing of research and association with professionals or professional institutions, and offering significant benefits. We are all, in a sense, waiting for that next product to improve our lives, and many of us like to feel we are on the cutting edge – getting an advantage over others by being savvy early adopters.
Women worry more than men do. A study of 166 married couples who kept stress diaries for six weeks found that women feel stress more frequently than men because women tend to worry in a more global way. Whereas a man might fret about something actual and specific—such as the fact that he's just been passed over for a promotion—a woman will tend to worry abstractly about her job, her weight, plus the well-being of every member of her extended family. Keep your anxiety focused on real, immediate issues, and tune out imagined ones or those over which you have zero control, and you'll automatically reduce stress overload.
A therapy that slows brainwave activity, helping to produce low-frequency waves, is likely to aid relaxation and sleep. But it’s not only lowering brainwave frequency that binaural beats may offer to sleep and relaxation. A small study (19 people) has found that exposure to binaural beats is associated with changes to three hormones important to sleep and well being:
Deeper Meditation • Near The Stage Of Sleep • Vivid, Dreamlike Imagery • Creative Visualization • Feel More Open & Connected • Advanced Problem Solving • Super Creativity • Insight • Intuition • Inspiration • Deeper Subconscious To Super-Conscious Mind • Trance-like • GABA • Immune System • Serotonin • Endorphins • Acetylcholine • Lower Cortisol • Deeply Relaxed • Sleep Better • Emotional Intelligence

Just so, when you reach a state of meditation you don’t “keep digging”, so to speak. The hole has been dug. All that digging has done what it was meant to do. Once your technique has gotten you into meditation, STOP DIGGING! You’re there. If you keep digging you will frustrate your ability to remain in meditation for any significant period of time. Only resume your chosen technique if and when you slip out of the meditative state. If you’re human then you WILL slip out of that state again and again. Don’t worry about that. That’s how the process works for all of us mere mortals.

Theta waves also have been observed in moments when a person recalls information from the past, and this may be what links them also to improvement in learning ability. We also experience theta waves when we go into automatic pilot mode, such as when doing a repetitive task like driving a familiar route where the mind become disconnected while you still drive safely toward your destination.
Binaural beats must be listened to using headphones. You definitely should not use them while driving or operating heavy machinery as you will be in an altered state of mind. Brainwave entrainment is a form of meditation and designed to be very passive, in fact, all you need to do is sit back, put on your headphones and let the technology do the work for you. It is best to find a session that you find soothing to listen to, as binaural beats on their own are a very strange sound that can be disturbing to some listeners. This was actually what inspired me to invent Trypnaural as a way for brainwave entrainment to be more bearable to listen to for long periods of time.
... [9] While entrainment by binaural auditory beats in the alpha frequency has also been shown to enhance creativity, cognition, memory, and an improvement in intelligence tests and achievement tests in learning disabled boys. [10][11][12][13] The gamma-band activity has been shown to involve in a variety of functions such as attention, memory, and consciousness. Current literature suggests that entrainment by gamma beats promotes cognitive flexibility, modulates visual attention, and enhances creativity. ...
After fixation upon our phenomenon takes place, what started out as a random perception is now cemented into our experience of, and is conditionally associated with entrainment. We condition ourselves to relive the same experience associated with entrainment each time we use it. It isn’t random any longer. It is explicit conditioning, and it repeats as predictably as the sunrise using entrainment as its new trigger.
Absolutely. Binaural beats were first discovered over 150 years ago, and their use in brainwave entrainment audio has been the subject of a great deal of scientific exploration over the last 35 years in particular. Millions of people use brainwave entrainment music to enhance their quality of life and to experience deep relaxation. In fact, brainwave entrainment technology is now used for more than just meditation. It is also used by a variety of practitioners and private users for improving self-confidence, stress relief, pain management, relaxation, improving and concentration and improving the quality of one's sleep. If you would like to read an objective third party report on binaural beats, please refer to this Wikipedia article.

While visual entrainment is more powerful than audio alone for inducing desired brainwave states, more caution is needed when using visual methods. Between 0.3 and 3 percent of the population is susceptible to having seizures from flickering light stimulation, and for other people, flickering visual stimuli simply makes them uncomfortable. People with epilepsy have a greater chance of having a seizure from exposure to flickering light stimulation.

Our everyday, waking brain used for active intelligence operates at approximately 13 hertz, which is in the range of high alpha or low beta frequencies. People who have certain learning disabilities and problems with attention often have low levels of 13 hertz frequency brainwaves in crucial areas of the brain used for sequencing tasks and doing simple math calculations. This is one concrete example of how brainwaves are associated with thinking and behavior. Each identified brainwave frequency has a different effect on a person’s ability to think, act, and feel.
This is probably the most popular choice of frequency. The theta state is a state of tremendous stress relief. The benefits associated with theta level relaxation include improved concentration, reduced hyperactivity and improved memory. While in a state of theta relaxation, one’s blood pressure, breathing and heart rate all slow to a much more restful and healthy level that promotes natural healing. During theta relaxation one may also experience vivid flashes of mental imagery as the mind opens to memories or subconscious information that is not available to the conscious mind during the normal waking state. The theta state is a very deep state of relaxation that is excellent for deep hypnosis and mental programming.

In fact just having a particular range of brainwaves running through our grey matter is also not “meditation”. Brainwaves are not the cause of the meditative state. They are only an indicator that we might be in a meditative state. And then again we might be in some other state as well. Those exact same brainwave frequencies are present during many different activities and states of consciousness, not just during meditation.

When your thoughts start to spin out of control during a stressful moment, stop and reframe your thinking. “By your choice of perspective, you direct how your body will respond—in fight or flight, or in creative choices and solution-based responses,” says Lauren E. Miller, stress relief and personal excellence expert and the author of 5 Minutes to Stress Relief. If you’re stressed about something you fear happening, such as “I’m not going to get this project done and then my boss will fire me,” think instead of what a great opportunity it is to show your boss you’re a hard worker. “Resist the urge to cast yourself as the main character in dramas that have not even occurred,” Miller says. Also, instead of asking why something is happening, ask what you can do to fix it. “Asking ‘why’ pitches you in an endless loop of questions, whereas asking ‘what’ sets you into problem-solving mode,” says Deborah Serani, PsyD, award-winning author of Living with Depression and a psychology professor at Adelphi University. “Moving forward instead of being lost in the circle of worries and “whys” helps to reduce stress.” Try these simple mindfulness stress relievers.
Exercise can be an effective component of a stress management program for many individuals and should be recommended to help those who are dealing with acute, acute episodic, or chronic stress. An advantage of incorporating exercise into a stress management program compared with other stress management techniques is the well-documented physical and psychological health benefits of exercise. However, it is important to remember that exercise is only one component of a stress management program, and there might be situations that require assistance beyond the expertise of a fitness professional, especially in working with individuals who are experiencing acute episodic or chronic stress. Although exercise might be effective in helping an individual feel calmer who is dealing with these types of stress, it will not solve the problem of major chronic or regular stressors. It may be necessary to refer these individuals to resources who can help them to address their stressors, such as a psychologist or other health care providers.
Several adaptogenic herbs and essential oils have been shown to improve anxiety symptoms by reducing the effects that stress and cortisol have on the body. Adaptogens (including ginseng, ashwagandga, maca, rhodiola, holy basil and cocoa) are a unique class of healing plants that balance, restore and protect the body and make it easier to handle stress by regulating hormones and physiological functions.
Entrainment is a term originally derived from complex systems theory, and denotes the way that two or more independent, autonomous oscillators with differing rhythms or frequencies, when situated in a context and at a proximity where they can interact for long enough, influence each other mutually, to a degree dependent on coupling force, such that they adjust until both oscillate with the same frequency. Examples include the mechanical entrainment or cyclic synchronization of two electric clothes dryers placed in close proximity, and the biological entrainment evident in the synchronized illumination of fireflies.[13]